The February 8th announcement that Drag Illustrated Media will hold its inaugural World Series of Pro Mod (WSOPM) shook up the drag racing world when Editor-in-Chief Wes Buck revealed the unique, $100,000-to-win event on his weekly Facebook Live show. Scheduled for August 4-5 at Bandimere Speedway near Denver, Colorado, the race will feature an invite-only field made up of 16 of the most talented and entertaining legal Pro Modified drivers. Many aspects of the one-of-a-kind event led to a barrage of questions directed at the Drag Illustrated office.

As excitement around the race continues to build, Buck recently took the opportunity to answer several of the most common questions he’s been asked since the official race announcement was released.

Putting on a race of this nature is a tremendous undertaking. Why is Drag Illustrated jumping into race promotion? Why now?

We’ve been publishing DI for 11 years. We’ve sent 117 issues to print. We’ve done our absolute best to tell the stories of racers and teams, and the battles they fight at the dragstrip every weekend. Honestly, it’s always been a part of my personal vision for us to move into the event space at some point. I’ve been waiting for the right time. It’s an audacious move, and I think that, personally, we needed to build up the audacity to think that we could hold a race and it would matter and it would be significant. I believe we have the platform now; I believe it’s time. It’s time for us to be a part of the stories we’re telling. I want to see our event written about on the pages of Drag Illustrated, on DragIllustrated.com, across our social media platforms, but also on those of others. I feel like it’s time for us to inject ourselves into the storyline.